WORLDWIDE outrage has rightly greeted reports that Saudi Arabia’s “justice” system recently sentenced a young woman, gang-raped by seven men, to 200 lashes for being alone with a male friend who was not related to her through blood or marriage.
We stand with and commend the actions of decent people like Nancy Cunningham of Halifax, who has launched a letter-writing campaign in support of the Saudi woman persecuted under her country’s misogynistic, oppressive system.
Sadly, such gender apartheid practices in the Middle Eastern kingdom are nothing new. Under that nation’s arbitrary, discriminatory laws – based on an extreme interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism – women are routinely denied the right to vote, drive, study or work in certain fields and, of course, have their personal freedom to move about often sharply curtailed by the requirement that they be accompanied by appropriate male guardians.
In this case, Saudi justice officials claim that in 2006, the then 19-year-old woman, dressed provocatively, was involved in an adulterous tryst with an unrelated man in a car; she and her partner were then kidnapped by seven men at knifepoint and sexually assaulted. Her assailants received between 10 months and five years for kidnapping. She was sentenced to 90 lashes for being with a man unrelated to her. When she spoke out in the media, denying the allegations, and her lawyer appealed, a vengeful Saudi court suspended the lawyer and upped her penalty to 200 lashes. Her attackers’ sentences were also increased, to between two and nine years.
The international reaction has had some effect. Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal called the ruling a “bad judgment;” the case is to be reviewed by the judiciary. But there’s little doubt such actions come only as a result of widespread condemnation of the sentence, as the case itself reflects the discrimination women and girls face daily in Saudi Arabia.
The greater shame, however, is that it takes such incidents to rouse Western leaders to denounce the ongoing reality of brutal gender apartheid – a term used to describe what’s happening to women in many nations – in Saudi Arabia.
Most of the time, there is only silence, and the sickening spectacle of Saudi Arabia as a member of the UN’s new Human Rights Council, defending its despicable treatment of women in the kingdom as an internal, religious matter.

On August 31, 2006, Jordanian Supreme Court suspended Fatima Habib, 35, a Jordanian female judge, from her position as a judge. The decision came two days after she had sentenced Saleh Radwan, 27, to death for killing his younger sister Dana, 21, when he discovered that she has a male friend and that she has an affair with him.

“My sister dishonored the reputation of the family for having an affair with a friend,” answered Saleh when asked once by a journalist about the reason of the murder.

Most judges in Jordan were against the sentence and asked the court to cancel it and appoint a male judge in order to do justice for the �dishonored man.� “What would we expect from a woman judging a man for killing another woman. Of course she would have stabbed him herself if she could,” said Mohammad Awwad, the attorney appointed to defend the murderer.

Everyone has expressed their relief after the decision of the court.

Fatima Habib is believed to be biased to women because she has thrown behind her back any consideration for the “fit of fury” defense in “honor” crimes cases, even when the murder was clearly premeditated. So it is seen in Jordan, and everyone is satisfied, as they believe the penal code should condone these cases by providing the murderer with reduced sentences. But is this justice?

Manar Salameh, 21, a friend of the deceased said with tears: �Dana was an angel. I can’t believe she is murdered, she was in love with Ayman and they were to marry after graduation. Oh! No we’re not savages, we’re civilized.”

Many other friends of the victim said that Dana had not done anything wrong, and that her relationship with Ayman was as pure as any other relationship of friendship and courtly love. “It seems that the story reported to her brother, by envious people, was so much distorted because the crime happened while Dana and I were strolling in the campus,” said Ayman who was kept under protection all the time lest the �dishonored� family harm him out of uncontrolled fury.

Fatima Habib considers the decision complete barbarism and primitivism. She adds that it will take us ages to convince people here that women are human beings, and they are as wise as men if not wiser sometimes. Fatima would never put her hands up and surrender. She said that she has the right to be a judge or even a prime minister without doing any harm to the criteria of justice.

“Extremists in our midst spread propaganda claiming that women�s liberation is a western thought aiming at eradicating Islamic morals. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of extremism against women. Those extremists know nothing about Islam because one of the major messages of this religion is to defend women and give them their rights to be as equal as men,” says Fatima.

�I think the court � including those self-centered men of law and the society as a whole � are the murderers of Dana.”